Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas

We celebrate the Nativity of the Lord in our household today, and wish you the best of the season, whatever you call it and however you choose to celebrate it. Blogging will be light or nonexistent
today, and we are rerunning last year's piece:

About 15 years ago, we were looking for a creche -- we never had one
growing up, and felt that we needed one. Because we are also cheap, we
finally found one in the after-Christmas sale at the Folk Tree Gallery
in Pasadena for half off -- a simple set of painted terra cotta from
Peru. We liked it very much, so we bought it, they boxed it, and we
took it home.

But
as we unpacked the box, we found out that we had a passenger -- a
broken, terra cotta cow, in a totally different style. It had a
broken-off horn and a leg was just barely hanging on -- obviously from
another set, broken and put in the box in the back room to be thrown
away later, but instead they used the box to pack my set and didn't
notice the cow already in it.

This was my first nativity set, and
I had a problem. What do you do with a broken, non-matching piece?
Throw it away? Maybe -- but there's a protocol for getting rid of worn
out American flags -- maybe there's some kind of protocol for broken
creche pieces? I had no idea. I set up the nativity set, and put the
broken cow in the back until I could figure out what to do with her.

Well,
for several years I just packed her and forgot about her until the next
year. Sometimes she was put in the back of the display, where her
non-matching brokenness wouldn't distract too much. Sometimes i just
left her in the box as I brought out the other pieces ... but I never
threw her away.

Over time, tho', she has moved more to the front
of the display, and now I like to put her nearest the Christ Child,
despite the fact that she's broken and doesn't match the other pieces.
She reminds me of ... well, me. That just means she needs to be there
-- in fact, she's the one the whole event is for.

The picture
is of a Flemish painting by an unknown artist, c. 1515, "Adoration of
the Christ Child," which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York. Several years ago, psychiatrist Andrew Levitas and geneticist
Cheryl Reid made a discovery: the angel closest to Mary, and possibly
one of the shepherds in the back, bore facial evidence of Down
Syndrome. They conjectured that the artist used models with Down
Syndrome fully three centuries before the condition was identified by
Dr. Langdon Down.

And the artist didn't call attention to it --
in fact, they're representing beings (shepherds and angels) who are
meant to be there. Imperfect and somewhat damaged, as we all are, but
also welcomed to the Nativity.

Thanks to that broken cow -- and that painting -- we take Christmas a lot more seriously now.

TrackBack

Comments

Merry Christmas

We celebrate the Nativity of the Lord in our household today, and wish you the best of the season, whatever you call it and however you choose to celebrate it. Blogging will be light or nonexistent
today, and we are rerunning last year's piece:

About 15 years ago, we were looking for a creche -- we never had one
growing up, and felt that we needed one. Because we are also cheap, we
finally found one in the after-Christmas sale at the Folk Tree Gallery
in Pasadena for half off -- a simple set of painted terra cotta from
Peru. We liked it very much, so we bought it, they boxed it, and we
took it home.

But
as we unpacked the box, we found out that we had a passenger -- a
broken, terra cotta cow, in a totally different style. It had a
broken-off horn and a leg was just barely hanging on -- obviously from
another set, broken and put in the box in the back room to be thrown
away later, but instead they used the box to pack my set and didn't
notice the cow already in it.

This was my first nativity set, and
I had a problem. What do you do with a broken, non-matching piece?
Throw it away? Maybe -- but there's a protocol for getting rid of worn
out American flags -- maybe there's some kind of protocol for broken
creche pieces? I had no idea. I set up the nativity set, and put the
broken cow in the back until I could figure out what to do with her.

Well,
for several years I just packed her and forgot about her until the next
year. Sometimes she was put in the back of the display, where her
non-matching brokenness wouldn't distract too much. Sometimes i just
left her in the box as I brought out the other pieces ... but I never
threw her away.

Over time, tho', she has moved more to the front
of the display, and now I like to put her nearest the Christ Child,
despite the fact that she's broken and doesn't match the other pieces.
She reminds me of ... well, me. That just means she needs to be there
-- in fact, she's the one the whole event is for.

The picture
is of a Flemish painting by an unknown artist, c. 1515, "Adoration of
the Christ Child," which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York. Several years ago, psychiatrist Andrew Levitas and geneticist
Cheryl Reid made a discovery: the angel closest to Mary, and possibly
one of the shepherds in the back, bore facial evidence of Down
Syndrome. They conjectured that the artist used models with Down
Syndrome fully three centuries before the condition was identified by
Dr. Langdon Down.

And the artist didn't call attention to it --
in fact, they're representing beings (shepherds and angels) who are
meant to be there. Imperfect and somewhat damaged, as we all are, but
also welcomed to the Nativity.

Thanks to that broken cow -- and that painting -- we take Christmas a lot more seriously now.